This invention relates generally to the field of detecting theft of mail pieces and more particularly to using an automated mail piece tracking system to detect theft.
The United States Postal Service (USPS) operates a letter tracking system known as the “CONFIRM” system. The CONFIRM system employs automatic scanning of barcodes on letters as the letters are automatically sorted by sorting equipment in postal facilities. Each letter to be tracked carries two barcodes: (a) the well-known POSTNET bar/half-bar code which may indicate an 11-digit zip code (i.e., a postal delivery code; the 11 digit POSTNET code may also be referred to as a delivery point barcode or “DPBC”); and (b) the PLANET code, which is also well known from documents published by the USPS. The PLANET code is also a bar/half-bar code and serves to uniquely identify a mailing in which the letter was produced. Assuming that only one mail piece in each mailing is sent to a given delivery address, and given that the DPBC indicated by the POSTNET barcode corresponds to a unique delivery address, the combination of the POSTNET and PLANET barcodes on a mail piece serve to uniquely identify the mail piece. With scanning of the POSTNET and PLANET barcodes on a mail piece at some or all of the postal sorting facilities as the mail piece moves through the mail delivery system, the progress of the mail piece can be tracked and confirmed.
Many mail pieces are of little value or interest except to the mailer and the recipient. However, other mail pieces may be of significant value to third parties and so may run the risk of theft en route from the mailer to the recipient. For example, credit and debit cards are frequently sent by first class mail, and may be attractive to would-be thieves. Card activation procedures are customarily employed with respect to credit or debit cards sent through the mail, but may not always adequately prevent fraudulent use of stolen cards. One particular difficulty facing those who wish to prevent wrongful use of stolen credit or debit cards is the period of several days that may elapse from mailing of a card until its expected delivery date. If a card is stolen soon after mailing, the thief may have two or three days to fraudulently use the card before delivery or non-delivery can be checked with the intended recipient.
With the USPS CONFIRM system, tracking of a mail piece such as a letter that contains a credit or debit card, and comparison of actually recorded observation events versus an expected sequence of observation events, may provide an opportunity for an early warning that the mail piece and its valuable contents have been stolen or gone astray. The mailer and/or card issuer may then take precautions such as preventing authorization of charges using the card in response to an indication that the expected sequence of observation events has not occurred.
However, there may be difficulties in relying upon the CONFIRM system to indicate loss or theft of valuable mail pieces. In particular, such a practice may be prone to “false positive” indications of theft or loss. This may occur because it is not unusual for some hand-sortation of mail pieces to occur instead of normally occurring machine sortation and scanning. Alternatively, processing of mail pieces may simply be delayed for various reasons. For these or other reasons, normally expected scanning of some or all of a mailing may be omitted or delayed even though the mail pieces have not been lost or stolen and are ultimately delivered in good time to the intended destinations. Therefore, reliance on the CONFIRM system in detecting theft or loss of valuable mail pieces may result in excessive expense in the taking of counter-measures in cases where theft or loss has not in fact occurred.